


Coda

by standbygo



Series: Retrograde [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, M/M, Porn with Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-13
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2018-01-04 12:04:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1080789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/standbygo/pseuds/standbygo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I think… I think I want to touch you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coda

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into 中文 available: [我想碰触你](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2499506) by [RictinaM_Z](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RictinaM_Z/pseuds/RictinaM_Z)



> Epilogue to "No Sacrifice" and "Nutmeg and Mace". Can be read as a stand-alone, if you squint at the plotty bits.

The sky over London was just transitioning from black to slate as John fumbled the key into the door of 221B Baker Street. He and Sherlock entered silently; they had been living on the run for two months through Poland and Germany and it would take them some time to feel safe making noise. John was just glad that Sherlock didn’t pick the lock out of habit.

John’s exhaustion grew exponentially with every one of the seventeen steps up to their flat. The entire cab ride had been spent idly trying to decide which he wanted to do first when they got home: have a hot shower, drink a cup of tea made properly, or sleep for a week. It was getting harder and harder to come to a decision, all three sounded so good.

He opened the door to the flat and the decision for a fourth option became suddenly clear, and he headed straight for his chair and collapsed into it, sighing with the comfort and familiarity of it. Sherlock followed suit in his own chair. Sherlock rarely conceded to the needs of his body, so John was faintly surprised when Sherlock tipped his head back and closed his eyes. He looked as though he might fall asleep in the chair.

John watched him for a moment, and the urge to sleep suddenly passed. For two months they had followed every lead they could, trying to track down the remains of Moriarty’s and Moran’s network, trying to find anything that could connect them to Mary’s killer. Two months of hiding in alleys, breaking into buildings, two steps ahead of the local police, eating crap food… for nothing. Every lead dried up. It appeared that Sherlock truly had shut down the network during his exile, and now they were back to square one. Even worse than square one, because the original lead was now cold.

He felt the frustration build and then release. Sherlock would do it, and John would help. Sherlock had solved cases colder than this before. And John knew that Sherlock would put his full effort into the search, even though any other man in his position would not have raised a finger.

During the two months, neither he nor Sherlock had mentioned John’s regained memories, nor the time before John had shipped out to Afghanistan. Not a single word. John was grateful for it, as it allowed him to process everything that had happened to him over the past five years.

Two months is a long time to consider the relationships in your life. Even while hiding in alleys.

John realized that the time to speak was now.

“Sherlock?”

“Mmmh?” Sherlock grunted without raising his head.

“I think… I think I want to touch you.”

Sherlock’s head snapped up, his eyes wide and staring.  John laughed – he hardly ever got to see Sherlock surprised, and rarer still to be the cause of it.

Suddenly, and despite what he had just said, John felt he couldn’t look at Sherlock right now. He abruptly stood and crossed to the window, fiddling with the curtain swag. He could feel rather than see Sherlock’s gaze follow him.

“I don’t think I would have been a good husband to Mary,” he said softly.

He hadn’t said that out loud before, just murmurs in his mind getting louder. Even though he knew he had modulated his voice, it sounded deafeningly loud in the room.

“I loved her, absolutely loved her. I don’t know how I would have survived the time you were away without her. When I proposed to her I meant it, and never regretted it, not for a second.

“But I’m only really alive when I’m haring after you, on a case. I thought I would become a responsible husband, always choosing her first and taking cases with you second. But I think… I realize now that I would have started to choose the cases more and more.” He glanced up at Sherlock, briefly. “Not just the cases. You. Choosing you.” He let his gaze drop again.  “And I’m an old fashioned bloke that believes that your spouse should be your number one priority in your life. And I see now I wouldn’t have been able to do that for her.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot. Almost non-stop. And I feel like an absolute shit about it.” John’s hand tightened on the curtain, wrinkling it in his fist. “I should have talked to her before the wedding. I should have told her about the memories returning and allowed some time for us – all of us – to figure everything out. And it kills me to think that if I’d done that, she might not have been shot.” He swallowed and gave himself a moment to get control of his voice again. “I still want to find the bastard that killed her, I want to look him in the eye and kill him. With my gun if I have to, but preferably with my bare hands.”

John forced his hand to release the heavy curtain, noting the creased pattern his hand had created in the fabric. He tried to smooth it out, unsuccessfully. “And I’ve been thinking about you. Us. From before. I couldn’t think about it very much the day of the wedding, the memories had only just come back to me and I couldn’t process anything with the shock of it. And I’m grateful to you for… for what you did. Telling me to marry Mary.” He felt a small smile quirk the side of his mouth up. “Epic fail as a sociopath, by the way.”

He took another look down at the street through the window, at the city beginning to wake up. John took a deep breath to steel himself, and turned to Sherlock. Sherlock was still sitting stock still in his chair, his intense gaze fixed on John, his expression inscrutable.

“I used to think the time after Afghanistan, after we met and I moved in, was the best time of my life. And now I realize that the… what was it? Eleven and a half hours? Before I shipped out. That, _that_ was the happiest I’ve ever been.

“So now I want to stop talking, and I want to come over there, and touch you, and kiss you, and see if we can get some part of that happiness back.”

John waited. He still couldn’t read Sherlock’s expression, but knew that if Sherlock was going to bolt, or deny, or, worst of all, laugh – now would be the time.

Sherlock didn’t move.

John wondered for a moment whether he was dreaming as he felt himself moving towards Sherlock without being aware of his feet and legs taking him there. Sherlock’s eyes never moved from John’s as John stopped in front of the chair and slowly, slowly, knelt in front of Sherlock. He put his hands over Sherlock’s hands on the arms of the leather chair. He hesitated once again, searching Sherlock’s face for any kind of signal that he should stop, and found none.

He leaned forward and up and kissed Sherlock on the mouth, carefully and gently. His sense memory took him back to that strange night so long ago, a summer night on a hotel balcony with the cacophonous sounds of London in the background. Sherlock’s mouth was dry and warm and full, and John felt a whisper of sadness that he had forgotten this feeling for so long.

He let his mouth drift away from Sherlock’s, but before he was more than an inch away he felt Sherlock’s hands stir from the arms of the chair, slip to the sides of his face and pull him back.

John’s heart began to pound. His own hands slipped to Sherlock’s waist, beneath the suit jacket, and he deepened the kiss. He ran his tongue along the seam of Sherlock’s mouth, felt it part, and felt the huff of breath on his cheek. God, this felt so right, so natural, their mouths fitting together perfectly. Sherlock’s reactions seemed hesitant at first, then less so as he clearly remembered the dynamics of kissing. John allowed himself a moment to imagine what it would be like to not kiss anyone for five years, and that thought made his heart dip slightly with sadness for Sherlock for his years of loneliness, and his arms pulled him a little closer.

Sherlock shifted forward in his chair, pressing himself up against John’s chest and curling his long legs around John’s thighs. John gasped at the increased contact, and wrapped his arms around Sherlock’s back, feeling the pull of the muscles under his shoulder blades. Suddenly he felt he couldn’t go a moment longer without touching Sherlock’s skin.  He slid his hands down Sherlock’s back and pulled his shirt clear of the waistband of his trousers, reaching underneath the fabric to press his palms against the small of his back. The touch felt electrical and they both groaned into each other’s mouths.

Suddenly and without warning, Sherlock pushed him away and stood, shoving the chair back a few inches, and strode over to the couch. John went cold. “Sherlock?”

Sherlock stood with his back to John, his arms crossed so tightly that John could see his left hand reaching over his right shoulder. He was breathing in huffs.

John’s head was spinning, from the effects of the kiss and its abrupt cessation. He got up from his knees, heart pounding. Had he ruined everything? “Sherlock, talk to me. What’s wrong?” He put a gentle hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, wishing that he could stop it from trembling.

Sherlock wouldn’t and didn’t turn. John moved to stand beside him, looking at his profile. The expression on his face was one John had only seen once before – by a fireside in a small pub in Baskerville.

“Sherlock, are you afraid?”

Sherlock’s only response was to turn his face slightly away from John, a clear attempt to hide.

“What are you afraid of? Talk to me, please. I want,” John breathed hard, trying to keep his voice from shaking, “I want to help you. What’s wrong? Please.” He tried to angle himself around so he could try to make eye contact with Sherlock again, but Sherlock turned further away.

John’s throat went dry with a horrible thought. “Sherlock, don’t be afraid, please, don’t be afraid of me-”

“It’s not you,” Sherlock burst out. “Not you, how could I be afraid of you?”

John froze with shock. “I’m… I’m not sure how to take that.”

Sherlock made a strange noise: partly frustrated huff, partly a groan. “No no no, John, not like that, it’s me, it’s me-” He was pacing with agitation, only one or two steps in one direction, then the other, his hands twisted in his hair. “John. I. Am. An. Addict.”

“I know, Sherlock, I don’t care…”

“You misunderstand.” Sherlock took a deep, shuddering breath, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “After Mycroft forced me into that rehabilitation centre, I swore I wouldn’t return. I taught myself control, control over the urge to use again. After a while my desire for control went into other areas of my life – the need to sleep, to eat. I got addicted to _control_ instead of cocaine.

“Then I met you. And I found a whole new area I had to control.” He looked up at John with more vulnerability than he had ever seen before. “I didn’t want to. It was the one thing I wanted to let go of, to release. And I did, for a little while. Then you had to go, and then after your injury…” Sherlock’s long fingers were clenched into fists, the knuckles bony and white. “Can you imagine how you would have reacted if I had let down my guard for an instant, and touched you? I would have lost you, utterly.

“I eat when I need to, and no more. I sleep only when it is required. I have deleted my desire for cocaine. But I couldn’t delete you. Wouldn’t.  Controlling my desire for you was the only way to keep you near. Can’t you see?”

John had a new and horrifying appreciation for the hell that Sherlock had lived through for years, and he ached for him. “You don’t have to worry about that anymore,” he said softly but firmly. “I’m not going away. I won’t leave.” He took a tentative step towards Sherlock, who had wrapped his arms around himself again. “You’ve been so strong for so long. You can let go of this.”

Sherlock’s hands were twitching, wandering, up to worry his mouth, then clenching into a fist, then plucking at the fabric of his shirt. “You don’t know me like that, John,” he said, low. “ _I_ don’t know me like that.”

“Sherlock, look at me.” Sherlock hesitated, then slowly, slowly turned, keeping his head down. “Don’t be afraid. I can take it. I invaded Afghanistan, remember?” Sherlock huffed a small laugh despite himself. John smiled and stepped in closer. “Besides,” he murmured, unfolding Sherlock’s arms and slotting his own around his shoulders, “losing a bit of self-control is half the fun.”

He kissed Sherlock softly, softly, until he felt him begin to respond, then he added passion drop by drop with his lips, his tongue, his hands in Sherlock’s hair. He heard Sherlock groan quietly, and felt the vibration of the baritone rumbling against his chest. He felt Sherlock’s long fingers trace up his back, brush over the short hairs on the back of his neck, and up into his hair, and he responded with his own groan.

When John was in Afghanistan during the war, he had been within a block of a car bomb in Kabul. Not the explosion that sent him home, he wasn’t badly hurt at all, but the memory was vivid. He had been talking with a fellow medic and felt the shock wave first, buffeting his body against the other man; a millisecond later he felt the heat of the explosion wash over him. Then, and only then, did he hear the noise rock the street.

He remembered that moment, the sense memory of it, as he felt the shock wave roll off of Sherlock’s body and into his own. With a needy growl, Sherlock’s kisses metamorphasized into outright hunger. His teeth nipped at John’s lips, then moved down his neck and bit into the muscle between neck and shoulder. His fingernails scratched at John’s neck, digging in and pulling him closer. John made an undefinable noise, part gasp and part moan, suddenly unable to get enough air into his lungs.

Abruptly Sherlock snarled and threw himself away from John; John thought he might scream with frustration. Teeth clenched, he stared at Sherlock, who had backed away to nearly the other side of the room.

Sherlock was pacing, a few steps towards the kitchen, a few steps towards the window, never taking his eyes off of John. He wiped his mouth with his hand, panting, feral. John was suddenly reminded of a jaguar he had seen as a child at the London Zoo, treading back and forth against the bars of the cage, never wavering its gaze; he had been very grateful for those bars, as he realized with eerie certainty that otherwise he would have been torn to pieces.

But there were no bars for Sherlock, except the ones he himself had created. John knew with the same eerie certainty that he was witnessing an epic battle between Sherlock’s mind and body. The battle was Sherlock’s alone, and John knew he had to wait and watch, that he couldn’t help Sherlock this time. He stood, fists clenched and shaking, teeth clenched, his entire focus on Sherlock’s unwavering eyes.

Without warning, Sherlock launched himself at John, grabbing at the shoulders of his jacket, the momentum propelling John backwards into the wall of the hallway. John’s head bounced off the wall and he barely had time to wince before Sherlock’s mouth was on him again. John responded with equal fire, feeling more aroused then he had ever felt in his life.

After a long kiss that was more than half bite, Sherlock drew back, just a little. Hands fisted into the material of John’s shirt, he looked John deeply in the eyes.

“Mine,” he growled.

“Yes,” John gasped. “Yours.”

John pushed his hips against the wall and drove Sherlock into the opposite wall. He tipped himself up onto his toes to change the angle of their kiss, determined to give as good as he got. He felt like the surface of his skin was on fire.

Sherlock surprised him, putting his arms around him and lifting him just enough to drive him back against the other wall again, looking down at John with a wolfish grin. John responded by winding his fingers into Sherlock’s curly hair and flipping their bodies again. He pushed his hips into Sherlock’s, pulled back on his hair and grazed his teeth against Sherlock’s neck, feeling the flicking pulse under his tongue.

“Mine, mine,” John hissed. Sherlock whined in reply.

With each shift in position they were getting closer to Sherlock’s bedroom. John roughly pushed the sleeves of Sherlock’s suit jacket down his arms, throwing it down in the hallway and pushing Sherlock through the door. He tried to unbutton Sherlock’s shirt without breaking their kiss, but the tiny buttons defeated him and he pulled away growling, “I can’t – Sherlock, help me or I’ll-”

Suddenly he realized that Sherlock had frozen, staring. John glanced quickly over and saw nothing unusual, just the neatly made bed. He looked back at Sherlock, confused, and saw a trace of something rarely seen on Sherlock’s face: doubt.

“Hey, hey,” John whispered. He framed Sherlock’s face with his hands and forced him to look into his eyes. “It’s okay, it’s just me, just you and me, it’s okay…” He kept whispering this new mantra, and tipped their foreheads together as Sherlock’s eyes slid shut. “Just breathe, don’t think, don’t think…”

Sherlock inhaled slowly, once, twice, and the third time he opened his eyes again. John looked and smiled at a light in Sherlock’s eyes he had not seen in five years.

“There you are,” he murmured.

They kissed again, and this time it was Vivaldi instead of Wagner, gentle and sweet, soft and full of love and promise. Now the buttons on Sherlock’s shirt passed through the holes easily and the shirt fell to the ground like a shadow. Sherlock somehow pulled John’s jumper off without John noticing, and they lay down on the bed together, side by side, as close as skin would allow them.

John thought that a bomb could go off, Mrs. Hudson could walk right in the room, and he would never notice. Nothing existed beyond the sides of the bed, past the edges of his skin, past Sherlock’s fingertips and the ends of his hair. He had never touched a man sexually before, never been touched by a man like this, and yet he knew exactly what to do; when to press, when to hold, where to stroke.

Clothed, Sherlock had always seemed thin, ethereal, almost insubstantial. Now there seemed to be acres of his skin to touch and memorize. John discovered with delight a line of moles and freckles leading from Sherlock’s long neck down to his shoulder and along his chest. He traced the silver lines of old scars, tongued at bruises, taking the story of each mark into his mouth. Sherlock pushed his fingers into John’s hair, then groaned and pulled John back up to kiss him on the lips again, and began his own explorations of John’s skin.

John felt as though he was drowning in the sensations of touching, of feeling. The sounds of hands brushing skin and hair, lips and tongues against skin were amplified in the room, and the usual noises of London had taken a step back to allow them this time that they had waited for for so long.

John whispered, and he felt it bounce around the room: “Come back, come back here,” and Sherlock heard and came back to his mouth, then Sherlock was whispering against his lips, “Please, please,” and John responded, “Yes” and then said “Please” and Sherlock said “Yes”, and the words mixed and rose in the room and they each reached down and across, and buttons and zips and pants were briefly annoying, and then they gasped into each other’s mouths.

Sherlock’s penis was thick and heavy in his palm, and Sherlock’s long cool fingers were memorizing his own cock. “God,” John hummed, “that feels – that feels – oh God, Sherlock-”

Sherlock’s vocabulary had betrayed him as well and he seemed only capable of saying John’s name. John looked into his eyes and saw trust, and want, pent up for years and now flooding out, and he felt a small trembling in Sherlock’s arms and legs and knew what they needed and that they needed it now, now, now.

“Here,” John whispered, inching even closer, hitching down Sherlock’s body a little, “help me, help me.”

Their cocks collided, slid together, aligned. He pulled Sherlock’s hand up to his mouth and licked it, and held his palm to Sherlock’s lips while he did the same. He wrapped his hand around both their cocks, and Sherlock wrapped his larger hand around his, and after only a few strokes John felt the world go gray and every muscle in his body spasm. Somewhere he heard his name being called in a gravelly baritone and then all he could hear was their panting breaths like the last rumbles of a storm.

He held Sherlock close and felt tiny shocks pulse all over his body, the aftershocks dying away and giving way to the muscle twitches of the early stages of sleep.

“Should clean up,” he murmured, even as his eyelids dragged shut. “We’ll wake up glued to each other.”

“Acceptable,” Sherlock rumbled.

John laughed and sighed. “I’ll get a flannel, just a sec-”

Sherlock’s arms tightened and his eyes flew open. “John, don’t. I don’t care. Please. Stay. Don’t go.”

John looked into the grey/green/blue eyes and relaxed. “I won’t.” His arms tightened around Sherlock, and felt a returning pressure around him. “I won’t, not ever. Not ever again.” He leaned in, tilting their foreheads together. “And you? You neither, right?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Yes, I’m here.”

They held each other’s gaze, at first fighting sleep, then accepting it. As they slid into sleep, the last thing they saw was each other’s eyes, and it was the first thing they saw when they woke. _  
_

_End_

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone that has followed this series. Perhaps in time I'll return to the investigation of Mary's murder, but let's give the boys some time, shall we?


End file.
